Part Reviews

CPU Cooler

Installation was a pain in the ***. They sent the wrong back plate so we ended up having to "refit" it to get it working. Not a huge fan of the "insert the water block and twist" design. It's an older design though and from what I've seen the newer ones are better. Recommend getting one of the newer ones if you are going for a 120mm

Power Supply

Sigh... If were going modular can we maybe get some cables that aren't yellow red black brown? SATA power cable was backwards/up side down unfortunately. It wasnt too bad though. This was my first build with a full modular PSU and again... for the price its actually pretty sweet even with the little problems.

This is actually the first time I've seen NZXT's PSU... I poke around NZXT's website every now and then, they make their cases, fans, cooler all so appealing! And then you see their PSU in a corner, didn't even attempt to make it look spectacular. :/

Yeah man. That drove me nuts the whole time. Unfortunately to run the SSD Right side up I would have had to drill into the front side of the case under the front panel and run the cables that way... To be honest though now I wish i had.

That and the color of the 20+4... :\ I wish manufacturers would stop that.

1st of all, i logged in just to comment here. Additional HDD will not hurt you - a (western digital since it's quiet and last longer, i have WD 2tb green 5200rpm 3yrs old and no error at all) WD 2tb 7200rpm(red or black) would be nice. 2nd just put your OS in your samsung 850 evo SSD if you ever buy a HDD. 3rd using the samsung magician you can bump up the capability of your SSD enabling "rapid" using the magician app. Enabling Rapid mode uses your extra ram as cache and since you have a 16gb ram you wont have any problem since in default it will take a maximum 1gb ram which in no way you would be using the 16gb.

Ok so I checked it out and the build overall could use some work. I'm not certain what your use case is but I never recommend an i7 unless you are doing some serious business class number crunching on it or are just getting one to show off. You will almost never use the extra cores and unused cores = wasted money.

That being said I dropped the CPU down to a i5-6600K and went with a nice Z170 board that has some good features and will overclock nicely. I've owned a number of ASRock boards and they have all been solid.

You SHOULD be able to get a relatively decent OC on air with skylake and I have this same cooler running a sandybridge i7-2600K at 4.6 stable that you did on your build so I kept it.

Dropping the i7 also made room for an SSD (use as main partition and keep your 2TB as raw storage) and a more powerful GPU. You will see a lot more performance than just running a HDD and an i7. You had a GTX970 on your build which is a solid card but the R9 390X outperforms it at that price point. Alternatively you could also drop the SSD and go with a GTX980. Id personally still keep the SSD though.

Thank you for your response! This build suits my budget perfectly and I'm 99 percent sure these are the components I will use to build my PC. However, I was wondering if I saved up a tad bit more and changed the GPU to a 980 if I could drop to 550-600 watt PSU and still manage to overclock?

I'm showing you at just under 400W with a MSI GTX980 Twin Frozr so yeah you should still be good though I'm not sure to what purpose. The EVGA PSU on this build is on the SUPER CHEAP and even though it is rated for 650W it will only use what is required of it.

I am 100% new to PC building. This build in particular is right within my price range and has specs I desire for my PC 16gbs i5 processor and such. The thing is I will not be using my PC for gaming, I plan to use it as a d.a.w PC and so my question is can I skimp (a bit) on The graphics card to save money and if so which other would be compatible with this build? And is this sound card a good one? I don't want to go over the budget of this build so if its good to decent I will go with it. Thanks gents and ladies for your time

You can absolutely save by removing the GPU completely if you are not going to be playing games. EDIT: This CPU has 16 available PCI lanes so if you are planning on using a PCI interface I do not recommend using a Graphics card in this build. The i5 chip has integrated graphics for normal daily use. In fact I would completely drop the GPU in favor of a decent dedicated audio interface or bump the CPU to an i7 for the extra processing power.

My experience with audio is fairly limited so I can't really go into very much detail on particular items but I do have a few friends who produce and their rigs are about to spec with this one.

Something else I just considered as well. 256GB is not going to last you very long with samples and whatnot. I would dedicate that first SSD to the OS and Programs and recommend spending some of that extra cash from the GPU Delete on a 2nd SSD for your samples and a mass storage HDD for your work and general storage.

Was there anything special you had to do to mount the ssd on that side of the case? In every picture and video ive seen, they all mount it facing the back and i had been wondering this whole time hoo cool it would look to mount it facing the window. I myself have the Spec 01, but ordered the m2 for my brothers build. Also, is it possible to drill and scoot up that drive cage, it looks sort of out of place that close to the PSU. On my Spec 01 its placed closer up, but its not removable like the m2. Id like to remove it with the thumb screws and maybe drill it so i can mount it a little closer up.

Hey i hope you still have this build cause i have a similar one. I have a question. Does your pc boot even with that graphics card cause on the specs it says minimum power supply is 750W but you have a 500W. Im asking cause mine wont boot with the graphics card so i assumed not enough juice was the problem

Hi. Sorry it took so long. Yeah. The system boots normally with the GPU installed and monitors run through it.

The actual power draw of this system was not even close to what the recommendation was. If yours is not booting with the GPU installed I would test the GPU in another computer or make sure your PSU is not on the fritz. There's a lot more to power delivery than just wattage.